The Cake Slice: Piña Colada Cake

Anyone who knows me well knows that I like relaxing vacations in tropical places (but really, who doesn’t?). If I can’t be in paradise, then a frou-frou frozen drink with a paper umbrella and a plastic mermaid can usually put me in high spirits! But a Piña Colada Cake?? I dunno about that, but if it’s from the book Sky High, I’m willing to give it a shot.

This cake has a couple of standout elements. The first is the actual cake itself– a brown sugar cake that’s really soft and moist, and it stayed that way over the four nights it took us to eat it (and I only made 1/3 of the recipe!). The second is the pineapple filling– crushed pineapple cooked down with vanilla bean and lime juice. It is supremely delicious, and I’m thinking that if I reduced it just to the point of a loose sauce (rather than a jammy cake filling), it would make an awesome topping for vanilla ice cream!

I have to say, however, that on the first night, I wasn’t so impressed by the total package. A healthy sprinkling of rum moistens each cake layer. Normally that would get me pretty excited, but it was just too harshly alcoholoic for me. And the coconut buttercream tasted overwhelmingly of the coconut extract (which always seems a little fake to me) used to flavor it. Happily, after a night of refrigerated rest, the flavors nicely mellowed out…just like me under a palm tree with a drink in my hand!

Oh steph! That looks amazing. You could have been describing me in your feelings about frozen drinks + palm trees. I’m pretty sensitive to chemical tastes as well, I’m wondering if you’ve tried an organic coconut extract? Somewhat hard to find (at least for me!), but worth it! I use one by “flavorganics” and substitute it for vanilla in my usual buttercream recipe.

I always love my cakes better on day two, but I hear what you’re saying about coconut flavoring. I use a natural organic extract and I find it tastes a bit fake, somehow. The pineapple fillings sounds to die for! One of my favorite brunch spots here in A’dam makes an amazing pineapple-basil jam, that’s out of this world!